Homebrewers Association | AHA Forum

Is there any good brewing software for a Mac? I checked out Beersmith and ProMash and neither are available for a Mac as far as I can tell.Please let me know if there's something else I should be looking at.Thanks

There have been quite a few threads about software:http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=406.0http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=4825.0http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=5730.0

Including at least one specifically about Mac software:http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=4855.0

Refer to the above quoted threads by all means, but in a nutshell, just look for BEER ALCHEMY.Reasonably priced, very editable/customizable and very Mac. Written from the ground up by a Mac user for Mac users.

I don't rely on software too much to tell me what I should be doing (my tastebuds do that better than the software can) but the software can be useful for sharing recipes, scaling them, and doing rough calculations.

I have been using thishttp://sourceforge.net/projects/brewtarget/ (http://sourceforge.net/projects/brewtarget/)It works fairly well once you figure it out.

Got Beer Alchemy all set up including the link to the iphone..... and don't use it. I have a ring binder and make "numbers" spreadsheets for each batch. It's just handier to have paper to look at or jot a time down than it is a laptop. What I do have and use all the time is an iPhone app called BrewMath.

Thanks everyone.What I'm really after is a method for figuring out my strike temperature for the water that will be added to my grain. I sort of "winged it" last time and it didn't go as well as I would have hoped. I know ProMash is supposed to help calculate this. Besides that, I don't think I'd be using a calculator for too much. I have used BeerTools on-line before to get a sense of how an idea compares to the standards for that style but I'm not really looking to re-create styles yet as much as perfect a plain pale ale.I'll check all of these out.

Thanks Jeffy. That's what I was needing. I just played around with it for a few minutes (I really have to stop thinking about beer when I should be working) and it is interesting to see that the volume of water has much more impact than the temp of the grains.

it is interesting to see that the volume of water has much more impact than the temp of the grains.

The impact is based on weight (mass, actually) and the weight of the water far exceeds the weight of the grain. In addition, the specific heat (or heat capacity, can never keep them straight) of water is 1.00 so you get 100% of the benefit of it's heat. The same value for grain is around .38-.40 so you only get about 40% of the benefit of it's heat.

Look for a program called WineBottler. It'll make a bootable app out of beersmith that requires no knowledge of wine. http://www.wells-inc.com/howto-beersmith-on-a-mac-with-wine (http://www.wells-inc.com/howto-beersmith-on-a-mac-with-wine) for directions on using winebottler.

I use beertools pro on the mac. I'm fairly satisfied with it; it's overly complex and has a few niggly issues, but overall it does a good job at predicting things like strike temp and so on, once you have calibrated everything.

You can also use BeerPal for the iDevice. It costs like $0.99. I bought it and use it to mark down recipes when the inspiration strikes me. It also does a decent job at strike water temp and sparge volume predictions.

Finally, there's also the rackers calculators linked earlier in this thread. They're pretty good, but the formula there just assumes a 3F drop from the thermal mass of your tun. Not that big of a deal, especially once you've brewed a few times, as you'll quickly figure out your own fudge factor.